India at Winter Olympics: Competing in silence, waiting to be seen
While India’s attention was fixed on the T20 cricket World Cup and the much-talked-about AI Summit in Delhi, two Indian athletes were competing on snow in Milano-Cortina, largely unnoticed at home. There was barely any mainstream coverage as Arif Khan and Stanzin Lundup represented the country at the Winter Olympics.
Arif, the alpine skier from Gulmarg, finished 39th in the men’s slalom. Lundup, an Indian Army cross-country skier from Ladakh, competed in the men’s 10 km freestyle and finished 104th.
Their performances may not stir a nation obsessed with medals, but for India’s nascent winter sports movement, they carry weight.
India’s Winter Olympic journey stretches back to pioneers such as Shailaja Kumar, who at Calgary 1988 became the country’s first woman Winter Olympian and ranked 28th in slalom, and Shiva Keshavan, whose six Olympic appearances remain the most visible marker of India’s winter sports legacy.
For decades, winter sport in India has survived on the fringes, sustained by the snowy highlands of Kashmir, Ladakh, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, by the support of the Indian Army, and by the personal sacrifices of athletes rather than by any coherent national system, infrastructure or sustained funding.
At Sportstar, we have had the privilege of covering editions of the Khelo India Winter Games, reporting from Leh, Ladakh and Gulmarg, and speaking to athletes who train in near anonymity. Almost all of them ask for the same things — structure, facilities and year-round support.
Recent government initiatives, including the Khelo India Winter Games and India sending 59 athletes to the 2025 Harbin Asian Winter Games, hint at change. Encouragingly, medal winners at the national level are now emerging from regions beyond the traditional winter hubs.
The Milano-Cortina Games also raised uncomfortable questions. Ukrainian skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych was barred from competing because his helmet bore the names of Ukrainian athletes killed in the ongoing war. The International Olympic Committee, invoking Rule 50, which states that “No kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas,” enforced the ban, even as its newly elected president expressed solidarity.
It was a familiar contradiction. Sport, despite its insistence on neutrality, has always been a platform for expression. From the Black Power salute at the 1968 Olympics to Kimia Yousofi’s stand for Afghan girls at the 2024 Paris Olympics, it has repeatedly become the stage on which the world’s injustices are confronted. Athletes are not performers insulated from society. They are citizens with voices, and silencing them serves neither sport nor the ideals it claims to uphold.
Published on Mar 02, 2026
